How can you convict a guy of gun charges if they couldn't find the gun?

Doesn't have to be the murder weapon. They have video and found him with unregistered firearms and ammo in violation of state law. He could make a constitutional challenge to the laws but facially he broke them.

Doesn't have to be the murder weapon. They have video and found him with unregistered firearms and ammo in violation of state law. He could make a constitutional challenge to the laws but facially he broke them.

Two questions:

1 - Do you think they have enough to convict him on the murder charge , it really seems to me to all be , bits & pieces , circumstantial or unreliable.

Aaron Hernandez ATTACKED another inmate at Bristol County Jail earlier today ... and we're told he beat the guy up pretty good ...

Sources tell us the former New England Patriots tight end -- who is usually segregated from the general population -- was allowed to take a walk in an isolated hallway ... but somehow came into contact with another inmate.

We're told Hernandez recognized the other inmate and launched into an attack -- beating the other man up pretty badly.

Could Aaron Hernandez Walk ? Star Witness for Prosecution less likely to Testify

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The attorney for Carlos Ortiz, an associate of Aaron Hernandez who was charged in the murder of Odin Lloyd, said his client is unlikely to testify against the former NFL star. Ortiz was expected to be the prosecution's star witness; with Ortiz unlikely to take the stand against his friend, the Commonwealth's case against Hernandez may have weakened.

Court documents released over the summer indicate Ortiz was, at least at one point, cooperating with law enforcement. His cooperation led to the speculation that Ortiz would be the prosecution's star witness in the Commonwealth's case against Hernandez.
Ortiz's attorney, John J. Connors Jr., dismissed that notion on Wednesday after his client's court hearing was rescheduled.

"I don't believe he's going to be a witness, to tell you the truth," Connors told reporters, via the Boston Herald. "If people are going on the assumption that because the court dates were moved around we're cooperating, or we're doing stuff because he's cooperating, that's not the case."

The hearing was rescheduled to Jan. 9 to provide Connors sufficient time to examine the Commonwealth's evidence against Ortiz, who pleaded not guilty last month to the charge of being an accessory to murder after the fact.

It's uncertain if the prosecution ever intended to call Ortiz to the stand as a witness. Court documents, according to the Boston Globe and Hartford Courant, show Ortiz told investigators Hernandez left the vehicle with Lloyd on the night of the murder and that Hernandez later hid the firearm in a box in the basement.

If the prosecution did plan to call Ortiz to the stand his credibility would be questioned by the defense; Ortiz has already changed his story at least once about the events leading up to Lloyd's death.

Carlos Ortiz, 27, and Ernest Wallace, 41, were charged months ago as accessories after the fact in the slaying of Odin L. Lloyd, whose bullet-riddled body was found in an industrial yard near Hernandez’s North Attleborough home last June.

But on Friday, Bristol District Attorney C. Samuel Sutter’s office announced that a grand jury had handed up murder indictments against Ortiz and Wallace, both of Bristol, Conn. No explanation was given for the indictments, and Sutter’s spokesman declined further comment.

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Rosanna Cavallaro, a criminal law professor at Suffolk University and former assistant attorney general, said Friday that the new indictments do not necessarily mean plea deals are out of the question.

“Now that you’ve actually been indicted [for murder], that probably has a stronger coercive effect than the possibility [of a murder charge] looming, and not yet real,” said Cavallaro, who also practiced in the law office of renowned defense attorney Alan M. Dershowitz.

But Gerard T. Leone Jr., a former Middlesex district attorney now working in private practice at Nixon Peabody, said either man’s credibility could be questioned if they testified against Hernandez only after being indicted for murder.

He also said charging Ortiz and Wallace with the killing could make it easier to convince a jury to convict Hernandez for murder as a joint venturer.

“It’s a much more difficult case to have Hernandez as the sole person charged with murder,” he said. “You have no joint venture theory against people who are charged with different charges and not the murder. ... You can try to proceed if that’s your theory, but if you think about doubt and reasonable doubt, the optics alone are difficult.”

Cavallaro echoed those comments, saying that if only Hernandez was charged with murder, jurors “might be puzzled as to why he’s the one holding the bag, if all three of them were together.”

The arrest of Oscar Hernandez Jr. was part of a probe of gun trafficking between Florida and Massachusetts.

A Florida man has been indicted on charges of lying to a federal grand jury in Boston that was investigating alleged interstate gun trafficking in a case linked to Aaron Hernandez, the former New England Patriot charged with murdering a Dorchester man.

Oscar “Papoo” Hernandez Jr., 23, of Orlando, is charged with lying to the grand jury in December, according to an indictment unsealed Thursday in US District Court in Boston. The panel was investigating the “transportation of firearms” from Florida to Massachusetts.

The grand jury probe was prompted, in part, by a federal review of three firearms that Massachusetts State Police recovered during an investigation into “a June 17, 2013 homicide in North Attleboro,” the indictment said. The only homicide in North Attleborough that day was the early morning shooting of Odin L. Lloyd, 27. His body was found in an industrial yard near Aaron Hernandez’s home.

Aaron Hernandez, 24, has pleaded not guilty to murder and weapons charges in connection with Lloyd’s death and is being held without bail.

On Thursday, a federal judge in Florida ordered Oscar Hernandez detained until his transfer to Massachusetts to face the indictment. A lawyer who represented him did not respond to inquiries seeking comment.

The indictment accuses Oscar Hernandez of lying to the Boston grand jury on Dec. 4, when he testified that he did not purchase a Toyota Camry last April in Florida or have it shipped to Massachusetts.

State Police investigators in Massachusetts executed a search warrant on the Camry on June 22 at the North Attleborough residence of a man identified only as John Doe #3, and they recovered a rifle from the vehicle, according to the indictment. A law enforcement official briefed on the investigation said that John Doe #3 is Aaron Hernandez.

Former New England Patriots star Aaron Hernandez was indicted today on two counts of first-degree murder for the killings of two men in Boston’s South End in 2012 who were shot to death after allegedly encountering Hernandez in a nightclub, two officials briefed on the case said.

Hernandez is accused of murdering Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado. The two men were shot to death on July 16, 2012, while stopped at a traffic light by someone who drove up alongside them in an SUV with Rhode Island plates and opened fire.

Hernandez already faced charges in the murder of Odin L. Lloyd of Boston, who was found slain in a North Attleborough industrial park near Hernandez’s home in June 2013.

The new charges raise the disturbing possibility that Hernandez played games during the 2012-2013 season after murdering two men...

According to relatives of the two men killed in the shooting, Daniel Abreu and Safiro Furtado, neither knew Hernandez. Both worked for a cleaning company and didn't have criminal records. The shooting took place at a red light, shortly after the men had left the Cure Lounge in Boston's Theater District.

"They just came up and started firing for no reason at all," the alleged eyewitness told Fox 25 last fall. "We never had any trouble. We were not those kind of people. We were just having fun. … Things happened so fast. I was trying to defend myself. They were shooting everywhere inside the car, front to back. They just came to kill. That's it."

Aaron Hernandez [is] a man who police say killed three people, and tried to kill more.

But this doesn't necessarily mean Hernandez is a serial killer, said Helen Morrison, a forensic psychiatrist who has done extensive research on some of America's most notorious killers.

"A serial killer is a person with a very severe lack of personality structure. He's not a person," Morrison told USA TODAY Sports prior to two new murder indictments that were made public Thursday. "The serial killer just almost has a sense of continuing to kill as an act. It doesn't have any motive. It doesn't have emotion attached to it. It doesn't fit in the context or anger or revenge or the things that we think people commit homicides for."
...
"What we see in this guy, Hernandez, is motive. Anger and rage are motive. Whether he thinks he's being wronged or taken advantage, he's just going to kill people," Morrison said. "He just seems to be a guy with a tremendous amount of rage. He doesn't seem to be psychotic or mentally ill, like a lot of the mass shooters are, just sort of does what he wants to do. "
...
"[Serial killers] have no attachment to human beings," Morrison said. "This guy seems to have had a posse, obviously they admire him, would go along with almost anything he said. The celebrity groupie person will forgive anything, as long as they were with this guy."
...
Dr. Carl Taylor, a sociology professor at Michigan State who has studied gang culture for more than 30 years, said Hernandez... brought to mind old-school mobsters, an organized crime boss rather than petty criminal, "This is not simply about gang signs. This is being a gangster at a high level," Taylor said prior to the two new indictments. "He doesn't seem to be shaken."
...
If she had the chance to study or interview him, Morrison said she would focus on Hernandez's childhood and family history.

"A whole bunch of things to find out how, up until age 18, how did this kid function?" Morrison said. "Because you can't build a building without a foundation, and nobody just wakes up one day and becomes a murderer, or becomes narcissistic personality disorder. That is definitely developmental."

From everything I've read, Hernandez was very close to his dad, and was a totally normal kid. Then, his dad died unexpectedly during a routine medical procedure, and Hernandez apparently never recovered from that.

I'm not a shrink, but, maybe he felt abanonded and that led to severe rage/anger issues. Teen boys need their dads.

From everything I've read, Hernandez was very close to his dad, and was a totally normal kid. Then, his dad died unexpectedly during a routine medical procedure, and Hernandez apparently never recovered from that.

I'm not a shrink, but, maybe he felt abanonded and that led to severe rage/anger issues. Teen boys need their dads.

(Not that any of this is an excuse for murder).

I'm glad you qualified your comments. These events are NO excuse for murder. I've known many patients and acquaintances that were beaten savagely by their parents..........but later grew up with no violent tendencies.......in fact, with greater appreciation for compasionate social interaction. Hernandez is at very least a sociopath, if not a total psychopath.......and as such has innate character that has never had nor ever will have the ability to live among fellow human beings.

With Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez facing double murder charges from an incident occurring before he signed a long-term deal that paid a $12.5 million signing bonus, the team surely will do whatever it can to try to recover as much of the money as possible.

As explained Thursday, their decision to cut him makes that effort much more difficult. The Patriots should have retained his rights (like the Falcons did from 2007 through 2009 with Mike Vick), which would have allowed them to recover up to $10 million in signing bonus money, if Hernandez ultimately was unable to play from 2013 through 2016 due to incarceration.

CBS Boston has offered up a different take, based on a January 2013 report from former agent Joel Corry. Said Corry at the time: “Hernandez’s contract contains a clause where he represents and warrants that there weren’t any existing circumstances when he signed his deal that would prevent his continued availability throughout the contract. Committing or participating in a double murder should meet this standard. There’s another clause explicitly stating that the Patriots wouldn’t have entered into the contract except for Hernandez’s representations.”

The language cited by Corry doesn’t appear in the Standard Player Contract, which means that (if the report is accurate), the Patriots and Hernandez separately agreed to that language. Even so, the presence of the language doesn’t mean that the Patriots will be able to recover bonus money in a way that conflicts with the terms of the Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Paragraph 21 of the Standard Player Contract states that, if the player’s contract conflicts with the CBA, the CBA prevails. And the CBA sets forth the exclusive procedure for obtaining a forfeiture of money paid to the player.

At Article 4, Section 9, the CBA spells out the circumstances that allow money to be recovered. A “forfeitable breach” happens when a player under contract, for one of several reasons (including being in jail), fails to show up for work. If the Patriots hadn’t cut Hernandez, and if he had been unable to show up for work from 2013 through 2016, they could have recovered up to $10 million of his $12.5 million signing bonus.

But they cut him. By cutting him, they lost the ability to recover any of his signing bonus based on his failure to show up for work in any of the five years of the contract that the bonus covered, at $2.5 million per year.

The language Corry mentions, if it’s indeed in the contract, shouldn’t matter. The CBA takes precedence.

And if the Patriots push the issue of the contractual language too aggressively, they’ll at some point invite more pointed questions from the media and fans about why they gave Hernandez a $12.5 million signing bonus without knowing everything there was to know about whether Hernandez had done or would do something that would keep him from working by virtue of his employment in a state-run license-plate factory.

Authorities investigating Aaron Hernandez for the 2012 double-murder on which he was indicted last week have put out a public call for help: They're looking to speak with tattoo artists who did work on Hernandez's right forearm, reportedly under the belief that Hernandez may have gotten some ink to commemorate his role in the shooting...

Bart Hubbuch ‏@HubbuchNYP

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Authorities think the "Shot 2 Guys In Boston on 7/16/12" tattoo on Aaron Hernandez's arm might be a clue.

According to the D.A., Abreu accidentally bumped into Hernandez, spilling a drink, and did not apologize. This infuriated Hernandez, who according to the prosecution felt he had been increasingly disrespected at clubs. Surveillance video captured Hernandez angrily pacing outside the club before the victims left.

The victims had no idea Hernandez was angry at them, let alone that he was following them when they left the club. According to the prosecution, Hernandez pulled up alongside their car at a stop light, said "Yo, what's up now, [racial slur]?" and fired at least five shots...